


Are You Hiding?

by Missy



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Angst, Consent Issues, Drama, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5057461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There has to be a reason why Sheldon's so reluctant to hold her, to touch her.  Doesn't there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are You Hiding?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



> I decided to go with your darkest prompt, and I really hope you enjoy the piece. Warning for everyone else who stumbles across this; it features referenced though not explicitly depicted child abuse.

He doesn’t want to discuss it, whatever ‘it’ is, some pitch-black hole in his ability to speak to his physical desires. Amy can almost feel the gap in his armor, the ruinous blackness of it; the suck of something impossible to fathom, a festering cut, a flawed code. Why his flesh shrinks from her open hand, why his eyes glaze over whenever she tries to kiss him – why he can do all of this and yet profess his love to her Amy cannot understand; she only knows that it isn’t healthy. Even cigarette-smoking ape needs love.

She can suppose what’s wrong, guess just by looking at him, but the words refuse to be expressed, pressed recalcitrant between his stiff lips. How to make him jump through the flaming hoop, express himself, tell her what’s really and truly wrong in his heart? 

What was he like, a million years before they met? Who was he when he was alone in college, working on a thesis, his body charged with caffeine and his head bowed to his books. Did he yearn for companionship the way she did, or did he simply shrug and wrap the world around him like a shroud of fog? Who the hell is he, and did he drop from the sky like an alien out of the blue? What had made him tremble in the night? Fear? Or lust?

When he’s pinioned to the wheel of her demands the words come forth from his lips, reluctant, almost bitter. The pain is real, incarnate, and fearsome, and she knows she won’t be the one to help him fix it unless he wants to step over the line, unbind himself, allow the possibility of joy to linger on.

When he asks they’re alone. When he asks it’s pitch black, and she can’t see his face. “It was a long time ago,” he says. 

“He’s been dead for a long time.”


End file.
